Language Matters

Anyone who has read 1984 is aware of the importance of precise language and how words can be corrupted to mean exactly the opposite of their original meaning. The recent instances of language corruption are too numerous to mention, but the twisting and turning in the wind of journalists to avoid the words "Islamic Terrorist" are truly painful to behold.

If the recent events in Bombay cannot be called terrorism, the word has completely lost its meaning. And yet, journalists are still trying to avoid the "T" word. A respected British TV journalist actually called the perpetrators of the Bombay massacre "practitioners."

Practitioners? Of what?

If it is not obvious in this case that the "practitioners" systematically selected, tortured and executed their victims, what will they have to do? If executing a father and a 6 months pregnant mother in front of their 2 year old is not terrorism, what the hell is? Why does a panel on British Television feel compelled to state that victims were killed "without regard to race or creed" when precisely the opposite is the case?

Tom Gross, reporting in the Wall Street Journal, brings this criticism home, to the New York Times in particular:

Meanwhile -- perhaps even more disgracefully -- a New York Times report on the last day of the siege stated: "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

Has the New York Times learned anything since the Holocaust, when, even after the war ended in the spring of 1945, the paper infamously refused to report that the Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans and so on killed in the camps had been Jews, and killed as Jews?

Dozens of eyewitness accounts by local Indians said the gunmen shouted "Allah Akbar" from the Jewish center. It is housed in a nondescript block and is not obviously marked from the outside as a Jewish center. It is the one Jewish building in a densely crowded city of millions. And the Times, the self-proclaimed paper of record, wants to let readers think it might have been an accidental target?

How clear does it have to be before it is called what it is: Islamic Terrorism.